Clinical Review
Diabetes Self-Care Education: Cooking Classes as a Basis for Teaching Healthful Eating
Fed Pract. 2011 October;28(10):34
Author and Disclosure Information
Christine H. Peterson, MSN, CRNP, CDE; Walter Lumley, RN, BSN, CDE; Kelly McBride, RD, LDN, MA; and Deborah Capone-Swearer, MSN, RN-BC, NE-BC
Ms. Peterson is a nurse practitioner in Nursing Care Services; Mr. Lumley is a diabetes educator; Ms. McBride manages the MOVE! program; and Ms. Capone-Swearer is the patient education coordinator, all at the VA Philadelphia Medical Center in Pennsylvania.
After realizing how little patients know about healthful cooking at home and how that affects weight, these clinicians developed and taught cooking classes to their clients struggling to manage diabetes and lose weight.
As a group of clinicians, all of the authors were struggling to help clients with diabetes and obese clients to eat more healthfully and lose weight. While troubleshooting, we identified a huge knowledge gap: Many people today don’t know the basics of simple, healthful cooking.